"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Serge Auckland
wrote:
Our dear departed friend Keith has posted this on his web site, so he
still has an interest in audio...........
http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/show/show.htm
I got a link for a multi-MB download. Since I'm still using a POTS/modem
connection I decided I could live without that. Indeed, that I might not
live long enough to discover the contents weren't worth the wait. :-)
Anyone care to comment on what the download tells us?
I would imagine that the pressing quality is rather better now than it
was in the '70s. If nothing else, having guards round the presses
should help to keep dust down. Health and Safety sometimes is of more
use than just the obvious.
Hard for me to tell. I've only acquired 8 LPs in the last 5+ years. These
are a box set of fancy-produced Henrix re-issues I got for comparison
purposes with a 4 CD set. One LP side is audibly off-center, and others
have clicks in various places. Came shrink-wrapped, so it looks like even
fancy LP issues still show manufacturing/factory problems. Alas, a guard
around the machine won't ensure they will bother to put the hole in the
center... :-)
But overall, the sound seems fine - albeit at the cost of sides limited to
about 15 mins, so requiring 8 LPs.
That said, I discovered in another comparison that my old Frampton Live
double LP set has songs which were omitted from the single CD of the same.
Odd, since the timing would allow them to all fit onto one CD...
Slainte,
Jim
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Electronics
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The download is a 5'30" BBC programme "Working Lunch" which visits the old
EMI pressing factory, now under new ownership. The owner says that the vinyl
market is steady, showing no growth, but no signs of going away. Also says
that it's very much a niche market for collectors who like the tactile
nature of an LP and owning something tangible. The programme also makes the
comment that for some people, CDs have never come up to LP standards of
sound quality, which is why I suspect Keith had it on his web site.
Back in the '70s, I visited the CBS pressing plant in Aylesbury a few times
and was not very impressed by the obvious lack of care and quality control
taking place. LPs were pulled off the presses when still very soft and so
warps were almost certain, all to save a few seconds in the cooling cycle
and get higher production speeds. There were no guards round the presses
then, and dust was a constant problem, but seemingly totally ignored. I
have no idea if EMI were the same, but I would be surprised if they weren't.
Interestingly, the musiccassette production line showed more care being
taken than the LP lines. Perhaps being newer they were more automated,
consequently there was less scope for human screw-ups. They did seem to take
line-up of the duplicators quite seriously, and there was a time when I
thought that cassettes would end up better than LP. I bought a couple of
real-time in-cassette duplicated tapes and remember being very impressed,
but these never caught on. Sadly Dolby C duplication never got going,
perhaps because line-up was much more critical than Dolby B, perhaps because
the Public never understood Dolby processing and because CD was due soon.
As an aside, one of my bored Saturday activities when out shopping with my
wife was to go into Curry's or Dixons and ask the spotty youth to explain
what this Dolby thing does. The explanations were a riot of inventiveness,
but all sadly very wrong.
S.
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